


What Matters in Life

by Skeren



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: All the deaths, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5902291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The things he remembered were the deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Matters in Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written June 2005.

The first time he killed someone had been special. They were all special, but this was the one that he would never forget. The crack of the gun and the smell of gunpowder had been the beginning of the obsession. It had been hectic after, but in an amusing way. Amidst the hubbub he’d been ignored, his father carted off while he stood idly by and watched. He’d only been ten, but he’d tired of the word no, a word his mother had been fond of. Thinking him the victim, he’d been indulged and coddled, and his newly awakened love of firecrackers was seen as a common, childish obsession.

The second time he killed someone, it was because he didn’t want to stay in the foster home he’d been placed in any longer. He was thirteen by then and he felt he could live without a stranger trying to get between him and his studies, so he’d rigged the gas stove on a timer. It had been a glorious explosion, and he’d found himself craving the experience of watching something like that up close.

The third time was after he finally discovered how alchemy could combine with his love of explosives. It was just an experiment, and the unfortunate woman simply hadn’t understood the words ‘go away and leave me alone’. He’d just checked the arrays, and she walked into them. It was amazing. Focusing his power into the circles had been unlike any of the others before that. Where the first had been the beginning of obsession, this death was the beginning of his _life_. 

It was only a year or so later that he joined the military, his studies almost complete. He found himself reveling in the field missions, the chances to practice his alchemy until he found the perfect way, the style that would suit him best. He’d long since lost track of his kills before he found it, but once he did, he put in for the State Alchemists exam. He knew he would pass, that was never in question. He’d simply wanted there to be no flaws that could harm his show.

Ishbal was the first perfect death. He was let loose, given chance after chance to make them better, more colorful, more rich. But it was the stone. That first night with the stone was ecstasy. He had unequalled power, unrivalled touch and influence on all around him. It was glory and death, and he was god for that night. That night was perfect, leaving him the ruler of the dead until the stone was crumbled to nothing in his grasp, knees weak as everything was suddenly too quiet with the onset of daylight.

Prison came next. That sweet death after so long without. He hadn’t gone so long before, not since the first. It was like the quenching of a thirst that had been ringing him dry of spirit and drive. Then he was allowed to kill again. The word no again came into play, but only in ways that he could live with, ways that he could tolerate.

The next death that mattered… that was his own. He would have died no other way. No other way than by the hand of those explosions he so loved. He wouldn’t have allowed it.


End file.
